Tar Heels, after loss to No. 1 Duke, must play the waiting game until NCAA selections

North Carolina has played a lot of tough games this basketball season but now faces perhaps the toughest game: The waiting game.

The Tar Heels poured everything they had into their game against No. 1 Duke in Friday’s semifinals of the ACC Tournament. Had a late 3-pointer dropped, had a late lane violation not occurred, the Heels could have taken the Blue Devils to overtime.

But Ven-Allen Lubin’s 3-pointer went off the rim at the buzzer. Earlier, UNC’s Jae’Lyn Withers stepped into the lane just before Lubin released a free throw, negating a point that would have tied the score with four seconds left.

Had the Tar Heels gone to OT and won, odds are they would safely have secured a spot in the NCAA Tournament field. Even with Duke playing without injured Cooper Flagg and Maliq Brown, the Heels recovered from a 24-point deficit in the second half with some inspired play to put a scare into the top-ranked Devils before Duke escaped with a 74-71 win.

To UNC guard R.J. Davis, enough has been proven that the Heels (22-13) should be playing again next week, that the NCAA selection committee should notice their eight wins in their last 10 games, the two losses to Duke.

“We’re an NCAA Tournament team,” he said flatly. “I think the way we battled and stayed gritty when things didn’t go our way, the way we battled adversity … that’s what March is all about.

“We are an NCAA Tournament team and we want to go and make some noise.”

Still, there’s the wait.

The field will be announced Sunday on the NCAA Selection Show. The Heels, No. 36 in the NET rankings used to set the NCAA field, were 1-12 against Quad-1 opponents -- a possible albatross.

It could be a tense time until 6 p.m. Sunday, and then tough viewing as the at-large bids are posted.

“We’ll be ready to play next week,” Davis said. “There’s still high hopes and positivity. Wherever we are, I don’t really care. This team is a tournament team and we’ll prove that.”

If they’re in, could the Heels be a dangerous team in the NCAAs?

“A hundred percent,” Davis said. “We’re (waiting) for the Selection Show on Sunday, and then we’re going to do our thing.”

In the aftermath of the excruciating loss, the less said about it the better for the losers. But no one shied away from talking about it, including Withers, who had his head down on the bench after the game.

Before leaving the Spectrum Center, UNC coach Hubert Davis stood with Withers in a hallway — Withers with an arm around his coach’s shoulders — and both discussed a free-throw violation that will be rehashed and remembered.

“We’re a team,” Davis said. “We win together, we lose together. … There are so many things that we did in the game well, and things we didn’t do well that took us to the point we fell three points short.”

The Heels didn’t shoot the ball well on their 3-pointers, going 3 for 17 and having guard Elliot Cadeau make all three. The lane violation came at the worst possible time for UNC, but the Heels also missed seven other free throws, including one by Lubin before the violation.

“It’s not on him; he should hold his head high,” R.J. Davis said of Withers. “We all made mistakes in this game. It’s not just on him.

“I know he’s trying to beat himself up, but this team, we’re a family. We have his back.”

Hubert Davis, asked if the Heels were an NCAA team, noted that the question had been asked for the last month and a half.

“And to play basically must-win games for a month and half and in that stretch, we’ve actually played the best we have all season. That’s why I’m so proud of this team and this group,” he said.

With that, the Tar Heels were out of the building and headed back to Chapel Hill. For them, Sunday can’t come fast enough.

This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 5:45 AM with the headline "Tar Heels, after loss to No. 1 Duke, must play the waiting game until NCAA selections."

Chip Alexander

The News & Observer

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In more than 40 years at The N&O, Chip Alexander has covered the N.C. State, UNC, Duke and East Carolina beats, and now is in his 15th season on the Carolina Hurricanes beat. Alexander, who has won numerous writing awards at the state and national level, covered the Hurricanes’ move to North Carolina in 1997 and was a part of The N&O’s coverage of the Canes’ 2006 Stanley Cup run.